Flight club
Cabot teen takes on wild blue yonder
For the past few months, Baron Gilliam has been like a lot of 15-year-olds, practicing his motoring skills and looking forward to the day when he can command his own transportation. But unlike his classmates at Cabot High School, this sophomore had a different kind of test drive planned for his 16th birthday on Oct. 6.
Gilliam capped eight months of instruction with his first solo flight, skippering a Cessna 172 Skyhawk around the skies above Searcy. The flight earned him a 90day window to continue to fly solo under fair-weather conditions, which he’ll do, in addition to continuing supervised flights.
“My dad works for Wilkerson’s Jewelers as a pilot, and when I was younger, I would also go on trips with him,” Gilliam said to describe his early aspirations to fly. “I’d look out the window and see this sea of the world. I just loved it. It was just really fascinating for me.”
Gilliam didn’t have to twist his father’s arm on the idea. In fact, Bobby Gilliam is a longtime commercial pilot and a certified flight instructor who estimates he has taught 300 people how to handle an aircraft since 1998. And he was more than happy to make sure his son and only child was trained properly, he said.
“Well, the training went pretty well because I don’t take any bull off of any of my students,” Bobby said. “We started out just going flying in the afternoons, just piddlin’ around and looking around and enjoying it. I started teaching him to land, and one thing led to another.”
The first part of Baron’s training — supervised in the cockpit, as well as on a simulator — led him to a written test over the summer. Having completed that, the teen dug into regular flight practice, a combination of flying under the supervision of his dad and Paul Weatherford, a private instructor with Flying C Aviation in Searcy.
“Baron’s been flying two different types of airplanes,” Bobby said. “He’s been flying a J5 Piper Cub, which was built in 1941, and that’s what I originally started teaching him on. For him to solo, I wanted him to get into something with some electronics, so I took him up there to Flying C Aviation. I know the owner; he’s a corporate jet pilot also, and I said I wanted to bring my son up there and put him in a Cessna 172.
“I also said I wanted to turn him over to one of their instructors so I’m not the one always yelling at him.”
Baron said that while he enjoyed the process of learning how to fly, the endeavor did have its stressful moments, moments he chalked up to being a rank beginner.
“When I first started out, I was a nervous wreck,” he said. “I was holding on to the controls as tight as possible, scared to make any little mistake. I was terrified. I still grip the controls a little tighter than I should, but overall, it’s a night-and-day difference.”
In the days leading up to Baron’s solo flight, he said, he and his father were in the air regularly, polishing every little detail in Baron’s technique. The mature teen takes all of his dad’s instruction in stride, knowing it’s there to make him a better, safer pilot. With just a few days to go until his first solo flight, Baron was confident in his ability to take the next step toward his personal pilot’s license, which he hopes to earn a year from now.
“I believe I’m gonna knock [the solo flight] out of the park,” he said. “I don’t believe I’m going to have any problems.”
His private pilot license is just the first step in the aviator’s goals for the future. From there, he’ll pursue his instrument rating and commercial rating, which will make him employable as a pilot. Add to that a CFI (certified flight instructor) tag, and he could be licensed to teach others how to fly as early as the second semester of his senior year of high school, should everything unfold as planned.
After high school, Baron said, he’d like to pursue a business degree and is eyeing the University of Central Arkansas in Conway to do that. Ultimately, he’d like to fly for a major airline, but that’s a long way and many, many flight hours down the road, so for now, he’s just happy to have this first step safely tucked into his logbook, he said.
“My dad was just ecstatic that I would want to do the same thing that he does,” Baron said. “And my mom, [Maria], said, ‘Just do what makes you happy.’”